


Blankets, No Suits

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: Red Dust [3]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Agoraphobia, Alternate Universe - Space, Established Relationship, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 07:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18310613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: “When you call your mom, what are you going to say to her?”“I’m going to tell her about the mission. All the weird shit we had to do up there. And…”“And?” Patrice encourages.Now, Brad smiles a little, and seems slightly closer to being his old self. “And I’m going to tell her about you.”





	Blankets, No Suits

**Author's Note:**

> These two act a little off in this one, but they're recovering from the return to earth after TWO YEARS off-planet. So they have to re-learn how life works.

The things you notice when you finally come back from Mars after two years are strange. The things you don’t notice are even stranger.

For instance, they managed to get an apartment about a week after they returned. Patrice notices that once they have it, they never leave except to get food. Some of the color is coming back into both their skins now that they’re not restricted to nutrient paste and protein bars. Brad looks out the window a lot, but never wants to set foot beyond the door, not even into the hallway.

But he doesn’t notice other things until Brad points them out to him. Like how he mutters in his sleep now they’re back on earth. How he always tries to put his coat on before leaving to get groceries, even though it’s almost July. How he’s still a little shaky, the same way he was when they first landed (if not as bad). How he spends a lot of time staring at his laptop screen without actually doing anything, completely lost in thought.

The thing neither of them will admit to is that they’re scared to go out for more than a few minutes. It’s too loud, and they’re unprotected, and _how_ are there _so many people_ around all the time? Things are too heavy but not heavy enough at the same time; gravity is stronger on earth, but there isn’t a bulky pressure suit holding him down anymore, so even though Patrice feels weaker it also seems like he’s going to randomly float away at any second.

The best word for it is overwhelmed, Patrice decides on the first morning of week seven post-return. He can sort-of think straight again, while Brad is still on a complete sensory overload and probably will be for awhile. The transition back to being earthbound has been especially cruel to his boyfriend, who spends a lot of time nearly getting heat stroke under a pile of blankets on the bed. They’re overwhelmed by so much input and so many variables after two years of relatively predictable quiet.

“I should call my mother,” Brad mumbles from the counter - he’s standing there putting way too much milk and sugar into his coffee, wearing just his boxers but with four blankets draped across his shoulders.

“You said that yesterday but you never did,” Patrice informs him.

“I’m going to today.”

“But you said that yesterday, too, when I told you you’ve been saying that for a week and still haven’t done it.”

“Well then I’ll do it right now.”

“It’s seven in the morning.”

“She’s my mother, and I need to call her,” Brad insists, completely abandoning the sugary monstrosity to look for his phone.

Patrice gets up from where he’s sitting on the floor in the corner of their tiny, empty living room and follows his boyfriend. Brad lists around, unable to locate his phone, until Patrice gently pulls him into an embrace from behind.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs, squeezing Brad a little. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Brad whimpers, leaning into him. “Everything stopped making sense when we got back…”

“We need to find a way to get life to make sense again,” Patrice decides. “For starters, you’re going to stop with the blankets before you cook to death on the bed. Go put those away, and then we’re going to call your mother.”

Most of their stuff is with their families in Canada, but they have a few boxes of random things that got mailed to them. Patrice helps Brad dig around until they come up with a clean shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, then they call Brad’s phone and locate it by its rings.

“Okay. Let’s try to plan this,” Patrice mumbles, thinking out loud. Brad is staring out the window again, so Patrice taps his shoulder to get his attention. “When you call your mom, what are you going to say to her?”

“Um… I’ll tell her, that. Um. I got back safe. I should’ve called her sooner.”

“Good, that’s a good place to start. Then what?”

“I don’t know…” Brad thinks for too long. Patrice is afraid to go outside, but it occurs to him that they probably should at some point in the near future, because it’s really throwing them off to trap themselves here like this. “I’m going to tell her about the mission. All the weird shit we had to do up there. And…”

“And?” Patrice encourages.

Now, Brad smiles a little, and seems slightly closer to being his old self. “And I’m going to tell her about you.”

Patrice grins back. “Maybe you can put it on speaker, we can both talk to her.”

“Yeah, uh, that’s a good idea.”

Patrice goes into the kitchen and has some grapefruit juice while Brad stutters his way through the first part of the conversation with his mother. As the minutes pass, though, it seems like consistently using his brain again is helping Brad talk more normally. Patrice tells himself firmly that yes, they _really_ need to go out today, because it’ll help no matter how terrifying it is to be under a sky without supplied air.

The sound of his name draws Patrice’s attention back to Brad: “Well, he’s like… he’s too nice for his own good. Yes, really. He almost choked to death helping me during a trip to the oxygen garden once. No. No! No, I tripped and there was some kind of… I don’t know, construction debris or something, it ripped open my leg and we had to duct tape my suit back together. Well, obviously not, mom, because I’m talking to you… yeah, I’ll ask him.” Brad holds the phone away from his ear. “My mom wants to come visit us in a couple of weeks.”

“That’s fine with me,” Patrice shrugs.

“Yeah, he’s cool with it. No. No, mom, you don’t have to bring anything… no, we already have food in the apartment.” Then Brad turns red unexpectedly. “Mom! Stop, okay? They don’t pack things like that on space shuttles, because we’re kind of there to work, not…” A pause. “Uh, it was kind of by accident. I had a panic attack on the way back from a job because it was right after the thing with my suit getting ripped, so then he cuddled me and made me feel better. Yes. Yeah, he’s really… okay you’ve got to stop asking about that!” Brad has turned tomato-colored and Patrice is desperately biting his tongue, because he can safely guess what the conversation is about. “No, okay? I already told you, condoms don’t get sent to Mars with us, that’s not what we’re there for! Yeah, I know it’s been that long, and… okay, do you _really_ want me to get into this? I don’t care what he said I did once in high school, I’m _not_ in high school anymore and I _can_ keep it in my pants!”

Patrice can’t help it - he bursts out laughing and has to run into the bedroom so that Brad can still hear the phone. When he gets a grip on himself and goes back over, it sounds like the conversation has moved to less awkward things.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him about it… uh, I don’t know, that’s months away and… but don’t you think his mom will want to see him on Christmas, too?”

“I’ll ask my mom about it,” Patrice whispers.

“He said he’ll ask his mom about it. No, I think… what? I don’t know if they’ll let us…” Brad looks at Patrice again. “Once the buffer year expires, are we going back into space?”

“I want to, but if you’re not up for it, I’ll stay here with you,” he shrugs.

“Yeah, we’re going back next year if they’ll let us. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Love you, too. Okay. Okay, bye.” Brad breathes in deeply once as he puts his phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Yeah, so, she wanted to make sure we’re being safe and shit, in case you wanted the exact context of that.”

Patrice laughs. “I figured it was something like that.” He hesitates for a second. “We need to start going outside again, Brad.”

“Why?”

“Because look how fucked up we are right now,” he points out; profanity isn’t a normal thing for him, but he knows it’ll really get through to his boyfriend if he uses it here. “I don’t recognize either of us, and I don’t think you do, either. Look how hard it was just for you to make a phone call.”

Brad takes a second to think about this, but nods eventually in agreement. “Yeah, you’re right… it just feels weird without… everything…”

Patrice reaches out and squeezes both of his hands. “Alright. Go put on your shoes, we’ll set a timer for twenty minutes in my phone, and once it expires we can come back in if we need to.”

“And then what?”

“Uh…” Patrice thinks, then shrugs. “We should go to the store while we’re out - your mom _really_ wants us to go buy condoms, apparently, so we probably should.” He only manages to keep a straight face up until the point where Brad starts laughing hysterically.

**Author's Note:**

> All three parts of this series were written for me. I know most people won't like or even read them, but whatever. I'm not sorry I put these up.


End file.
